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certain loans found only in Northumbrian texts, e.g. bratt ‘cloak’, carr ‘rock’, luh¯ ‘lake’. Moreover, it is not unlikely that Celts were held as slaves by the conquerors, and certainly many of the Anglo-Saxons married Celtic women. Thus, at least in parts of England, contact between the two peoples must have been fairly intimate and must have persisted over several generations. Nevertheless, the traces Celtic has left on the Anglo-Saxon dialects are minimal. This is also true of loans, with the exception of place-names. The following items have been identified as Celtic loans in OE: r¯ıce ‘rule, empire’, ambeht ‘servant, service, office’, possibly via Latin ambactus (these might be continental loans); binn ‘bin’, bannoc ‘a bit, piece (of a cake or loaf)’, gafeluc ‘a small spear’, dunn ‘dun, dark-coloured, grey’ (as modifier of tunecan ‘tunic’ and stan¯ ‘stone’), broc ‘badger’, assen ‘ass’ (< Lat. asinus); place-name elements, which also occur as independent lexical items: torr ‘rock, rocky peak, hill’, cumb ‘deep valley’ (e.g. Ilfracombe), funta ‘Spring’ (< Lat. font-em) (e.g. Chalfont). Loans probably borrowed from the Irish missionaries are dry¯ ‘magician’ < OIr. drui (pl druid), from which a feminine drye¯g˙ge˙ ‘female magician’ was derived by means of a native suffix, cross (vs native rod¯ ). Thus, except for place-names, the Celts have left few traces in OE vocabulary.
There had also been contacts with the continent, especially with the Frisians and the Saxons. It is assumed that ¯ıegland ‘island’ is of Frisian origin, and the following lexical items, occurring partly in translations of Saxon originals, e.g. Heliand, Genesis B, are attributed to Saxon influence: gal¯ , gals¯ cipe˙ ‘proud, pride’ (semantic loan), hearra ‘lord, master’, macian, gemacian˙ ‘make’, suht ‘illness’, wær ‘true’.
Since the religious revival in the late tenth and the eleventh centuries had its starting point in France, and since Edward the Confessor brought French friends to England when he came to the throne in 1042, we also find a few French loans in pre-conquest manuscripts. The most noticeable is the prud¯ ‘proud’ family with the derivatives prutl¯ ¯ıc(e)˙ ‘proud(ly)’, pryto/pr¯yte¯, pryts¯cipe˙, prutness¯
‘pride’ and numerous compounds, which encroach on the indigenous overmod,¯ modig¯ territory. Especially remarkable is the analogical transfer of the alternation /u y / (cf. ful¯ ‘foul’ fyl¯þ ‘filth’), originally due to i-umlaut, but at that stage purely morphologically conditioned, which indicates that it must still have been productive at least sporadically. Other loans found in the mid and late eleventh century, especially in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle between 1048 and 1100, are sot ‘foolish’, bacun ‘bacon’, cancelere ‘chancellor’, capun ‘capon’, castel ‘castle’, prisun ‘prison’, servian ‘serve’, serfice ‘service’, tumbere ‘dancer’.
4.2.4 |
Word formation |
|
Word formation was the most important means of expanding OE vocabulary, both in terms of its indigenous needs in poetry and the requirements imposed by the translation of Latin texts into the vernacular. Thus all major
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categories of word formation – compounding, prefixation, suffixation including zero derivation – were highly productive.
One striking property of OE word formation is its pervasive stem allomorphy. This is a residue of a number of sound changes the language had undergone, leaving their traces in the morphology in the form of morphophonemic/allomorphic alternations (for a more detailed treatment of this area, see Dressler, 1985). It was only during the ME period that the principle of stem invariancy for regular inflection and native word formation characteristic of Modern English took over, leading to many analogical non-alternating formations. This is especially noticeable with nouns and adjectives exhibiting ablaut alternations; see (3) in Section 4.1.3. above.
The major alternations characteristic of OE morphology apart from ablaut are due to the following sound changes:
i-umlaut (i-mutation): full fyllan < full-j-an ‘fill’, curon (: c˙eosan¯ ) ˜ cyre (also involving Verner’s Law) ‘choice’, gram ˜ gremman ‘enrage’, trum ˜ trymþ ‘firmness’
consonant gemination: gram gremman, wefan webba ‘weaver’, sagu sec˙gan˙ ‘saying’
palatalisation + assibilation: c˙eosan¯ curon, cyre, lugon lygen˙ ‘lie’, brecan, brucon bryce˙ ‘breach’, gangan genga˙ ‘goer’, acan ece˙ ‘ache’
Anglo-Frisian Brightening/a-Restoration: /æ/ /a/: faran fær ‘journey’, grafan græf ‘style for writing’, græft ‘carved object’, bacan gebæ˙c˙ ‘baking’
Originally, these alternations had been phonologically conditioned, but due to the loss of the conditioning factors they were no longer predictable in OE and have to be treated as morphologically conditioned. Also, their distribution is far from systematic, and one and the same derivational pattern may have forms with and without the respective alternation, e.g. stani¯ g˙ stæni¯g˙ ‘stony’, þorniht þyrniht ‘thorny’, etc. This unsystematicity was no doubt one of the major reasons why stem variancy was replaced by basic stem invariancy in ME in connection with the generalisation of word-based morphology.
There is also suprasegmental alternation, where certain prefixes are unstressed or receive only a secondary stress when they occur in verbs, but have a full stress when they occur in nouns; this stress alternation may also be accompanied by a segmental alternation, e.g. a`-weorpan´ ‘throw away’ æ´-wyrp` ‘what is thrown away’, on`-sacan´ ‘contest’ and´-sæc ‘denial’, and´-saca` ‘adversary’, besides homological on`-sæ´c. The alternation goes back to the proto-Germanic period, when word stress came to be fixed on the first syllable. At this stage, there were already prefixed nouns, whose prefixes were stressed, but the verbal prefixes were a later development, and therefore with them the stress remained on the verbal base. It is not unlikely that this alternation is at least one of the factors that contributed to the establishment of the Modern English stress alternation confl´ıct vb
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conflict´ sb, perm´ıt vb permit´ sb, record´ vb record´ sb, etc. in connection with the integration of French and Latin verb/noun pairs in late ME and early Modern English.
Compounds consist of two or more lexical items, but in the latter case the formations are usually analysable on a binary basis, cf. deofol¯ -gyld/h˙us¯ ‘heathen temple = house where devil-tribute is given’, god¯ -spell/bodung ‘gospel preaching’. There are substantival, adjectival and verbal compounds. The latter are restricted to instances with adverbs and prepositions as first members, e.g. forþ-faran ‘depart’, ofer-lec˙gan˙ ‘overlay, place over’, under-lec˙gan˙ ‘underlay’. Verbs such as cyne-helm(ian) ‘crown’, grist-bit(ian) ‘gnash the teeth’ are derivatives from nominal compounds (cyne-helm ‘crown’, grist-bite ‘gnashing’) and not verbal compounds.
The delimitation of compounds from other types of combinations is sometimes problematic. Adj + N compounds are easily recognisable because the adjective is not inflected, cf. heah¯ -englas ‘archangels’, wild-deora¯ ‘wild beasts’ as against heane¯ englas, wilde deor¯ , where the adjective is inflected and marks the construction as syntactic. In combinations of the apparent structure N + Genitive + N, such as Sunn-an-dæg˙ ‘Sunday’, cyning-es-wyrt ‘marjoram, lit. king’s root’, dæg˙- es-eage¯ ‘daisy, lit. day’s eye’, which correspond to Modern English formations like beginner’s luck (see Section 4.1.5 above), the whole NP has to be checked as to whether any of the determining elements can refer to the determinant or not. If the determiner þære¯ and the adjective sweartan refer to the determinatum helle, as in þære¯ sweartan helle grundes ‘the bottom of this black hell’, we have a syntactic group, whereas with se egesfull˙¯ıca domesdæ¯ ge˙ ‘the terrible doomsday’, where both the determiner se and the adjective egesfull˙¯ıca refer to the determinatum dæge˙, we have a compound. In such cases elements such as -es have to be regarded as linking elements; the same is true of vocalic elements in compounds such as hild-e-calla ‘war-herald’, gold-e-frætwe ‘gold ornament’, yrf-e-weard
‘heir’.
The delimitation of compounding from prefixation and suffixation is fuzzy. Thus cyne- ‘royal’ as in cyne-gild˙ ‘king’s compensation’ only occurs as a determinant and might therefore be regarded as a prefix. On the other hand, it seems to be in complementary distribution with cyning, which hardly ever occurs as a first member of compounds. Moreover, there are formations such as cyne-l¯ıc˙ ‘royal’, where the second part is a suffix, but combinations of prefixes and suffixes do not occur; cyne must therefore be interpreted as an allomorph of cyning (but on the way to becoming a prefix). On the other hand, nominal -dom¯ , -had¯ , -ræden¯ or adjectival -fæst, -ful(l), -leas¯ seem to have already reached suffixal status.
Another problem is formations such as bær¯-fot¯ ‘barefoot’, riht-heort ‘righteous = having a right heart’, yfel¯-wille ‘malevolent = having an evil intent’, an¯ -hyrne ‘having one horn’, an¯ -horn ‘unicorn = something having one horn’ (see also Section 4.1.5 above). Here, the overt second constituent is a noun, but the formations function either as adjectives or in a different semantic category as the
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noun; thus an¯ -horn does not refer to a horn but an animal. Such formations have traditionally been called bahuvrihi or exocentric compounds; see Section 4.1.5 above and Kastovsky (2002b) for discussion.
Since the superficial morphological structure of such formations did not agree with their function, they were often re-formed either by changing the inflectional class, usually to the weak declension, cf. an¯-horn-a, bunden-stefn-a ‘ship with an ornamented prow’, as against stefn, or by adding an explicit derivational suffix, e.g. clifer-fet¯ -e ‘cloven-footed’ (-e < -j-a), ea¯ þ-mod¯ -ig˙, ea¯ þ-mod¯ -l¯ıc˙ ‘humble = having a low mood’ besides ea¯ þ-mod¯ . Eventually this suffixal type of formation prevailed for adjectives (e.g. long-legged, blue-eyed, etc.), whereas with nouns the exocentric type paleface, hunchback, etc. won out.
4.2.4.1Noun compounds
N (stem) + N
This type represents the most frequent compound pattern and has been productive throughout the history of English. The relationship between the two immediate constituents, determinant and determinatum, can be reduced to three basic types, viz. additive, copulative and rectional.
The additive type consists of the coordination of two nouns, which are treated as a group, and is only represented by two examples from poetry, viz. a¯þumswerian ‘son-in-law and father-in-law’, suhtor-(ge)fædran˙ ‘nephew and uncle’. This might also be interpreted as a zero derivative based on a phrase ‘entity = Ø consisting of X +Y’. It was probably unproductive in OE, but modern additive formations such as Austria-Hungary ‘political body consisting of both Austria and Hungary’, north-east ‘directed towards both north and east’ also admit of such an analysis rather than following the standard AB = B compound schema. In such combinations neither constituent dominates and the basic idea is that the referent really is a combination of the properties of both parts.
Copulative compounds can be paraphrased by a construction containing the copula be, e.g. eofor-sw¯ın ‘pig (sw¯ın) which is a boar (eofor)’, frea¯ -wine ‘friend (wine) who is a lord (frea¯ )’. There are two subgroups, viz. attributive and subsumptive compounds, and both types survive into Modern English (cf. the glosses). In attributive compounds the dt attributes a specific property to the dm; in subsumptive compounds the dt denotes a subclass of the dm.
Attributive compounds are typically represented by sex-denoting formations or names of the offspring of animals, as well as names of professions, e.g. cniht-cild˙ ‘male child’, cu¯-cealf ‘heifer-calf’, w¯ıf-mann ‘woman’; the reverse order occurs in ass-myre¯ ‘mare (female) which is an ass = she-ass’, gat¯ -bucca ‘buck which is a goat = billy-goat’. The latter formations have the same semantic structure as sex-denoting suffixal derivatives like gyd-en ‘goddess = female who is a god’, dry¯-ic˙ge˙ ‘female who is a dry¯ (magician) = sorceress’, i.e. the dm denotes the sex, the dt the species.
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With subsumptive compounds the following possibilities exist:
(a)The dt denotes a concept with which the dm is compared: col-mase¯ ‘coal-tit’, spere-wyrt ‘spearwort’.
(b)The dt denotes the species, the dm the genus proximum: ceder-beam¯ ‘cedar’, ciris˙-beam¯ ‘cherry-tree’, marman-stan¯ ‘marble (stone)’.
(c)Both constituents denote different aspects of the same thing: were-wulf ‘a being which is both a wolf and a man’, ealdor-bisceop,˙ bisceop˙- ealdor ‘chief and bishop’.
(d)The meaning of the dt is already contained more or less in the dm (pleonastic compounds): eorþ-stede, eorþ-weg˙ ‘earth-place’, lagustream,¯ mere-stream¯ ‘ocean-water = sea’.
(e)The two constituents are practically synonymous (tautologous compounds): æht-gesteald,˙ æht-gestr˙eon¯ ‘possessions-possessions’, æled¯-fyy¯ ‘fire-fire’, holt-wudu, wudu-holt ‘wood-wood’. These basically only occur in poetry.
Rectional compounds are best defined negatively as compounds that do not allow a copulative paraphrase. Morphologically, we can distinguish two subcategories, viz. pure nominal compounds (N + N), and compounds that contain a deverbal dm, such as ber-end ‘carrier’, fall-ung ‘falling’. With the latter, the dt represents an argument (Subject/Agent, Object/Theme, Adverbial/Locative, Instrument, Temporal, etc.) of the verb, and the suffix also either represents an argument, or the semantic categories ‘Act(ion), Fact, State’. These patterns continue into Modern English, and a number of new ones were added through borrowing (see Kastovsky, 1985, 1986). Semantically speaking, both verbal and non-verbal compounds can express the same kinds of relationship.
1. Compounds with a deverbal dm:
(a)The dm is an agent noun, the dt denotes the Goal/Object (blod¯ -lætere¯ ‘blood-letter’, helm-berend ‘helm-bearer’, freols¯ -gifa˙ ‘giver of freedom’), Place (eorþ-buend¯ ‘earth-dweller’, sæ¯-genga˙ ‘sea-traveller, sea-goer = sailor’), Instrument (gar¯ -w¯ıgend˙ ‘spear-fighter’, fugel- w¯ıglere˙ ‘diviner by birds’), or Time (mete-rædere¯ ‘monk reading at meals’, nihte-gale ‘night-singer = nightingale’, niht-genga˙ ‘nightgoer = goblin’) of the action. According to Burnley (1992: 442), none of these survived into ME, so that the corresponding ME formations occurring from the thirteenth century onwards, such as wæi-witere
‘guide’, money-maker, good-doer, lawmaker, householder, look like ‘a fresh beginning’, but I doubt this. In view of the parallel with action nouns as second members, the pattern probably never lost its productivity.
(b)The dm is an action noun, the dt denotes the Subject/Agent (eorþ- beofung ‘earthquake’), Object/Goal (wæter-fyrhtness ‘fear of water’, a¯þ-swerung), Place, etc. (land-firding ‘military operation on land’,
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ciri˙c˙-gang ‘church-going’, wæ¯g˙-faru ‘passage through the sea’, æfen¯- ræ;ding¯ ‘evening-reading’, niht-feormung ‘hospitality for the night’) of the action.
2.N + N compounds without a verbal constituent:
(a)The dm is an Agent, the dt an Object, Place, etc.: bro¯þor-bana ‘brother-killer’, dure-weard ‘door-warden’; sæ¯-fisc˙ ‘seafish’, hereflyma¯ ‘army-fleer = deserter’; ec˙g˙-bana ‘sword-killer’; niht-hræfn ‘night-raven’, niht-weard ‘night-guardian’.
(b)The dm represents an Object/Goal, the dt an Agent, Material, Place, etc. connected with this Object: beo¯ -bræd¯ ‘honey = bread produced by bees’, smiþ-belg˙ ‘bellows’; bed-streaw¯ ‘bedstraw’; æfen¯-steorra
‘evening-star’; ræd¯-hors ‘riding-horse’, bletsing¯ -boc ‘blessing-book, benedictional’, ræding¯-boc¯ ‘reading-book’ (note that these are regular N + N formations, where bletsing,¯ ræding¯ have to be regarded as deverbal nouns, in contradistinction to Modern English swimming pool, writing-table, where the first part can be interpreted as a participle; the latter are an innovation of ME).
(c)The determinatum is part of the determinant: bord-rima ‘edge of a plank’, cawel-stela ‘cabbage-stem’, hearpe-streng ‘harpstring’.
(d)The dm represents a place to which the dt is related as object or action: sealt-fæt ‘salt-vessel (-cellar)’, beor¯ -sele ‘beer-hall’, drenc˙- hus¯ ‘drink(ing)-house’, melcing˙-fæt ‘milkpail’.
(e)The dm represents an instrument, the dt an object or action: breost¯ -beorg ‘breastplate’, fisc˙-nett ‘fishnet’; snid-¯ısen ‘cutting-iron’, bræding¯-panne ‘frying-pan’.
(f)The dm represents a time, the dt an action related to it: hærfestmona¯ þ ‘harvest-month’, sæd¯-t¯ıma ‘sowing-time’, clænsung¯-dæg˙ ‘day for purging’.
(g)The determinant functions as intensifier and has partially or totally lost its literal meaning: firen-þearf ‘dire distress’, firen-synn ‘great sin’ (firen = ‘sin, crime’), mægen˙-fultum ‘great help’ (mægen˙ = ‘strength, power’), þeod¯ -bealu ‘great calamity’ (þeod¯ = ‘people, nation’).
There are also some compounds consisting of three lexemes: eaforheafod/se¯ gn˙ ‘boar-head banner’, god-spell/bodung ‘gospel preaching’ (compound determinant); bisceop/h˙eafod¯ -l¯ın ‘bishop’s head ornament’, niht/butorfleoge¯ ‘night butterfly, moth’ (compound determinatum). Compounds with more than three lexemes do not seem to exist. All these types still exist in Modern English and will therefore not be exemplified again in the sections on Middle and early Modern English.
N + linking element + N
Compounds such as dom¯ -es-dæg˙ ‘doomsday’, Sunn-an-dæg˙ ‘Sunday’ are equivalent to Modern English craftsman, driver’s seat, beginner’s luck, where -es- and
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-an- function as linking elements and not as inflectional markers, although historically they may have had this function in syntactic groups. A similar analysis seems to be required for rest-e-dæg˙ ‘rest day’, hell-e-cwalu (besides hell-cwalu) ‘pains of hell’, where the intermediate vowel could be interpreted either as a genitive, a linking element or as the stem-formative of the determinant; again, the interpretation as a linking element seems to be the best option. The following semantic patterns belong to this type:
(a)days of the week: Sunn-an-dæg,˙ Monan¯ -dæg˙, and some analogical formations, e.g. gebyr˙-e-t¯ıd ‘time of birth’, sunn-an-setl-gong ‘sunset’, uht¯ -(an-)t¯ıd ‘time of dawn, twilight’
(b)person-denoting nouns: cynn-es-mann ‘kinsman’, land-es-mann
‘native’, æht¯-e-mann ‘farmer’, gat¯ -a-hyrde ‘goatherd’, ox-an-hyrde
‘oxherd’
(c)place-names: cyn(ing)-es-tun¯ > Kingston
(d)plant-names: dæg˙-es-eage¯ ‘daisy’, henn-e-belle ‘henbane’, ox-an- slyppe ‘oxlip’ (these might also be interpreted as bahuvrihi compounds)
(e)others without specific semantic characteristics: bog-en-streng˙ ‘bowstring’, tunn-e-botm ‘bottom of a cask’, nunn-(an-)mynster ‘convent’. Many of these are only found in late texts.
As in Modern English, the semantic range of this type of compounding is much more restricted than that of the regular N + N compounds.
Adj + N
With Adj + N compounds, the relationship between the determinatum and the determinant is that of attribution. Examples of this fairly productive pattern are cwic-seolfor ‘living silver = mercury’, efen-niht ‘equinox’, eald-fæder ‘ancestor’, gylden-beag¯ ‘golden crown’, sur¯ -meolc ‘sour milk’. The pattern also continues into Modern English. It was also very productive with bahuvrihis of the type heard-heort ‘hard-hearted’; see Section 4.2.4.6.
V + N
The pattern V(erbal stem) + N, as in Modern English bakehouse, OE bæc-hus¯ , was a recent development in the Germanic languages. It resulted from compounds such as delf-¯ısen ‘digging-iron = spade’, where the determinant originally was a deverbal noun (delf ‘digging’), which was formally identical with the verbal stem delf-. This led to a reinterpretation of the first constituent as a verbal stem, although for a while (and probably still in OE) many such formations may have been ambiguous between an N + N and a V + N interpretation. This type came to rival an older nominal pattern, ‘Verbal substantive in -ing/-ung + N’, e.g. bræding¯-panne ‘frying-pan’. In ME these verbal nouns in -ing/-ung merged with the participles ending in -ende, creating an ambivalent -ing-form. This could be interpreted as nominal, as, e.g., in the writing of letters takes time, or as verbal,